Baptists and Bootleggers--Enviro-corruption over pay to advocate for nat-gas

Baptists and Bootleggers

Todd Zywicki • February 23, 2012 7:11 pm

In an article several years ago I noted several of the unusual bedfellows made between certain industries and environmental groups:

The presence of these “gains to trade” politics may explain the otherwise puzzling financial support of industry for environmental interest groups. For instance, in recent years members of the waste treatment industry have pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the coffers of various environmental advocacy groups, including the National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation. Indeed, the Sierra Club has recognized that “the commercial waste industry has an interest in improving regulations sufficiently to drive mom-and-pop operations out of business.” Of course, the waste treatment industry also is aware of these potential gains to trade. Oil companies, including Atlantic Richfield and Chevron, contribute to environmental groups such as the National Audubon Society, who lobby to restrict opening new areas for drilling, thereby keeping new supplies off the market. As these examples illustrate, there are ample gains to trade between environmentalists and polluting industries, and they are usually exploited.

Now comes the emerging story of an alliance between leading environmental groups and the natural gas industry to advocate for the elimination of one of natural gas’s leading competitors:

Just four years ago, shale gas king Aubrey K. McClendon told shareholders of Chesapeake Energy that “finally, we made some new friends this year.”
The chief executive sketched a vision of working hand in hand with “leading environmental organizations” on issues “where our interests might be aligned.” He said, “We believe this collaboration is unique in the industry and will benefit both Chesapeake and these environmental organizations for years to come.”
New friendships grew old, then cold. Environmental groups that once took money from McClendon — or considered doing so — to make a common cause against coal power, have stepped back as they weigh the environmental perils of extracting natural gas from shale, a business in which McClendon’s Chesapeake Energy is a leader.
The Sierra Club took $26.1 million in contributions from McClendon and Chesapeake-affiliated companies between 2007 and 2010, a fact that its executive director, Michael Brune, first disclosed to Time magazine earlier this month. Last year, Brune walked away from Chesapeake and an offer of an additional $30 million in donations.

To put the $26.1 million in context, compare the funding for the Heartland Institute, about which one critic stated, “That the Heartland Institute is effectively acting as a front group for big oil and energy, raising money from companies which are threatened by climate policies, so that it can essentially do their dirty work in undermining legislation that threatens their corporate bottom line.” Heartland received a grand total of $676,500 from Exxon between 1998-2006 and $200,000 from the Koch Foundation in 2011. If that amount makes Heartland a “front group for big oil and energy,” what does $26 million make the Sierra Club for natural gas?

Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, has now come out and stated that they won’t take any more money from the natural gas industry. But if you read the statement, he is not saying that it was wrong for the Sierra Club to “effectively act[ ] as a front group for natural gas.” Instead, he indicates that the Sierra Club dropped out of the lucrative arrangement only because the natural gas industry has started using hydraulic fracking. It seems that but for that development the Sierra Club would have been perfectly content to lend its prestige and clout to Chesapeake’s rent-seeking efforts.

But the Sierra Club wasn’t the only one:

Although McClendon may be the gas industry’s most generous donor to environmental causes, he is not the only one. Natural gas entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens gave $453,250 to the liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) in 2008 and 2009 through his nonprofit groups, to support its National Clean Energy Project events. At the time, Pickens was pressing lawmakers to adopt a bill to subsidize construction of natural gas filling stations. The legislation would have directly helped a company Pickens co-founded called Clean Energy Fuels, which describes itself as “the leading provider of natural gas for transportation.”
Several companies with natural gas interests, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, have donated to the D.C.-based Center for Clean Air Policy as part of its efforts to sponsor an ongoing dialogue about domestic climate policy. Exxon and Chevron have given $35,000 each for an annual membership in the dialogue, while smaller industry associations have donated less.

I discuss the political economy of environmental interest groups more in this article.

For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of “Baptists and Bootleggers” the phrase was coined by my former professor Bruce Yandle to describe the regulatory process.

Update: I’ve been told that I overstated the size of the Koch Foundation’s contributions to Heartland, which was $25k in 2011 for health care issues and Heartland had hoped to raise that to $200k for health care the next year. I apologize for my misunderstanding.

http://volokh.com/2012/02/23/baptists-and-bootleggers/

A Brooklyn house trashed by Occupy Wall Street is a symbol of a movement that failed to capitalize on public anger - NYPOST.com

A Brooklyn house trashed by Occupy Wall Street is a symbol of a movement that failed to capitalize on public anger - NYPOST.com

How 'Occupy' went wrong

By CANDICE M. GIOVE

On Dec. 6, nearly 300 members of the Occupy Wall Street movement flooded into East New York to begin what they considered phase two of their efforts. A few weeks earlier, they had been rousted from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, where they had camped for three months — attracting worldwide attention and forcing politicians to take notice.

But for all the hype, Occupy was being criticized — even from the left — for being vague in its goals. The signs railed against bailouts and the greed of the 1%, but protesters coalesced around no legislation, no candidate, no reforms. Everyone agreed that inequality is bad, but what to do about it?

“Occupy Our Homes” was that idea. The group would take over an empty house, foreclosed on by a bank, fix it up and provide shelter to a homeless family.

For those sympathetic to the Occupy movement, it was a brilliant strategy. Foreclosures touched almost every neighborhood in America; an estimated 1.2 million homes were repossessed in 2011. In East New York, the hardest hit in the city, the foreclosure crisis struck 16.8 homes per thousand. Occupy Our Homes would alleviate neighborhood blight, provide shelter to the poor — and put banks on the defensive.

PHOTOS: 'OCCUPY' TRASHES B'KLYN HOME

The atmosphere was giddy that overcast December day. A swell of people hung banners (“Foreclose on Banks, Not People”) and chanted on Vermont Street, waiting to welcome new neighbors to 702, the two-story rowhouse Occupy had taken over.

The excitement reached a crescendo when Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) knocked on the door, decorated with a pine wreath for Christmas, and out came the homeless man who was moving in with his family, Alfredo Carrasquillo.

Barron raised Carrasquillo’s arm in victory.
Last week,Wise Ahadzi opened the door to the house he still owns, 702 Vermont Street in East New York.

Inside is a war zone. The walls are torn down, the plumbing is ripped out and the carpeting has been plucked from the floor. It’s like walking through a ribcage.

Garbage, open food containers and Ahadzi’s possessions are tossed haphazardly around the house.

“This is where my kitchen was,” Ahadzi says. There is no sink, no refrigerator and no counter space. Instead there are dirty dishes piled high waiting for a dip in three large buckets of putrid water that serve as the dishwashing system.
In a first-floor bathroom, Christmas lights dangle from a shower curtain rod. The only thing separating a toilet from the elements outside is a thin veil of paper.

As he leaves the wreckage, Ahadzi pauses in front of a tiny Dora the Explorer chair. "Remember that?” he asks his daughter.

This is the Occupy house, more than two months later. A scarred symbol of what the movement has become.

Ahadzi, 28, was the man Occupy didn’t want the public to know about.He owned the Vermont house but was forced to leave in 2009 when he couldn’t make the mortgage payments to Bank of America.

The single father knew he couldn’t raise his two girls, Kwazha, 9, and Imani, 3, with the threat of eviction hanging over him. They found a lower-cost rental in Brownsville while Ahadzi negotiated with the bank to get his house back.

But instead of helping Ahadzi, Occupy cast Carrasquillo as the man to move in, because he was a homeless advocate some of the members knew.

During the December event, Ahadzi was pulled aside and made assurances by Barron and others — we know your predicament, we’ll make it better.
Ahadzi was content with that answer for a while, until it was obvious Occupy wasn’t interested in him.

They didn’t seem interested in the house, either. In January, The Post found squatters in the house instead of the family.

“They only stay here sometimes,” a protester explained. “There’s not enough room for the kids.”

Ahadzi thought about calling the police, until the embarrassed Occupy movement promised him that they’d repair the house and leave.

Two weeks have already gone by since without any progress. Occupy hasn’t even offered to pay him for the damages.

They tore down many interior walls but did not put them back up. A neighbor said that mold corroded one wall, but a complete gutting of the house was unnecessary.

Even in this condition, protesters are still squatting on the floors, cooking using a bunsen burner and walking around guided by candlelight when a generator is not up and running.

Their efforts have actually made the neighborhood worse — because what used to be an empty house is now a hovel of squatters and probably should be condemned.

Things have gotten so bad that Barron,who once praised the movement, said that Occupy has worn out its welcome.

“The bottom line is that they have to leave,” he said.

Neighbors, who initially welcomed the ragtag bunch into the area, now stay away. Local Doyle Coleman tried to get other homeowners on the street to participate in a street cleanup with the Occupiers, but they all just said, “I don’t want to get involved.”

Another neighbor stood across the street from the house and shook his head, imagining how extensive the damages were inside considering the revolving cast of characters living inside. “It must be in shambles,” he said.

Occupy protesters like to take pride in how organic the movement is.

Adbusters Media Foundation, a Canadian group known for an anti-consumerism magazine, is credited with coining the term “occupy” last summer, but no group wholly dictates what happens.

Instead, Occupy gathers for General Assembly meetings held twice a week in a corner of Zuccotti Park. Members sign up to speak or pitch proposals. The crowd “twinkles their fingers” to support things or wriggles them pointing down to stand against them. Consensus is reached by a sea of dancing fingers.

While this is socialist by design, it makes decision making difficult. The group would debate endlessly how to use the $700,000 it raised, and even when it would spend some of that money — on bail or food — it would be accused by some members of misappropriation.

A group of 20 actually controls the money but were constantly saying they weren’t the “leaders” — more to avoid backlash from other Occupy members than anything else. When a protest becomes a live-in and not a march, meanwhile, the line between activists and freeloaders blurs.

Zuccotti Park, and its promise of free clothes, free supplies and free meals, attracted the city’s homeless. Rumors began to spread inside the park that shelters even recommended Zuccotti’s hospitality at intake.

Many of those freeloaders stuck with the movement long after the collapse of the encampment, because OWS has provided shelter to its members at two city churches. Until, that is, someone at a Manhattan church stole the lid of the baptismal font. The Rev. Bob Brashear told his guests that the theft was like “pissing on the 99%.”
OWS has often hurt the same people it says it wants to help. During the Zuccotti days, a mom and pop cafe’s bathroom was ravaged and its owner was left with thousands of dollars in damages.

The movement’s lack of leaders only made things more chaotic and confusing as the months have gone on.

There were marches, arrests and plenty of YouTube videos of protesters getting pepper-sprayed. In the end, though, it appeared that eliciting these kind of moments—provoking the police until they overreacted — was the movement’s primary, if not only, goal.

Occupy Wall Street will no doubt dismiss this article as just another media attack. But the truth is their initial rhetoric had more resonance than they might think— from many political leanings.
Ask someone at a Tea Party protest if they supported the bailout of Wall Street banks. Their answer would be the same as the bandanna-wearing protester on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The most popular book among conservatives these days is “Coming Apart,” Charles Murray’s analysis of the widening gulf between classes.
It’s hard to find anyone who disagrees with Occupy’s prognosis of what’s wrong. A Gallup poll conducted in January found that 83% of Americans were dissatisfied with the economy. Where people differ is the solutions.

To that end, what are Occupy’s solutions? In the New York Times Review of Books earlier this month, writer Michael Greenberg, obviously sympathetic to the movement, couldn’t contain his frustration with protesters unwillingness to get involved in issues such as the Keystone Pipeline because “it didn’t matter what laws you pass.”

Greenberg called their goals “morally abstract, with little visceral impact." And demanding economic justice was a “vague and sweeping term that invites both personal grievances and broad interpretation”— of which Occupy has plenty.

Since the group does not support any political candidates, Democrats are free to ignore Occupy — which many moderate members are happy to do. Without any leaders, the occupation’s small work groups and offshoots are also just too unpredictable and risky to support.

The 2012 election, in fact, is shaping up to be the inverse of the 2010 midterms. In those congressional races, Republican candidates mostly had to embrace and praise the Tea Party movement to avoid incurring its wrath. In 2012, Democrats, especially in swing states, will likely be spending their time making sure they’re not too closely associated with the Occupiers.
Occupy promises a return to larger protests in the spring, under the general banner of “raising awareness about inequality.”

But is any American really unaware of inequality? Does anyone need to be told that more people need jobs, that the middle class and the poor are suffering?

With banners and signs and slogans, Occupy “raised awareness” of the inequities of foreclosures. Then they left a wretched a house in Brooklyn, with an owner wondering who’s going to clean up the mess.

“I’m pissed off,”Ahadzi said. “I’m trying to get my house back, and they’re trying to take it from me.”
Occupy has shown it’s good at tearing things down. What happens if it had to fix them?

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/how_occupy_went_wrong_PbpcKJgxQg1FiU4D7vdefI#ixzz1n4kjJR9y

We are on the road to bankruptcy

By John Stossel

President Obama said in his State of the Union speech last month, “We’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings.”

That was reassuring.

The new budget he released this week promises $4 trillion in “deficit reduction” -- about half in tax increases and half in spending cuts. But like most politicians, Obama misleads.

Cato Institute economist Dan Mitchell, a recent guest on my Fox Business show, cut through the fog to get at the truth of the $2 trillion “cut.”
“We have a budget of, what, almost $4 trillion? So if we’re doing $2 trillion of cuts,” Mitchell said, “we’re cutting government in half. That sounds wonderful.”

But what the president was talking about is not even a cut. The politicians just agreed that over the next 10 years, instead of increasing spending by $9.48 trillion, they’d increase it by “just” $7.3 trillion. Calling that a “cut” is nonsense.

Mitchell gave an analogy: “What if I came to you and said, ‘I’ve been on a diet for the last month, and I’ve gained 10 pounds. Isn't that great?’ You would say: ‘Wait, what are you talking about? That’s insane.’ And I said: ‘I was going to gain 15 pounds. I’ve only gained 10 pounds, therefore my diet is successful.’"

Democrats use this deceit when they want more social spending. Republicans use it for military spending.

And the press buys it. The Washington Post has been writing about “draconian cuts.”

“The politicians know this game,” Mitchell said. “The special interests know this game. Everyone gets a bigger budget every year. ... And we wind up, sooner or later, being Greece.”

We are definitely on the road to bankruptcy.

“We have maybe 10, 15 years' advanced notice. And what’s frustrating is that we’re not taking advantage of that, even as we see these other countries collapsing into social chaos and disarray.”

Mitchell points out that the politicians don’t even have to make actual cuts to save the future. If they just slowed the growth of government to about 2 percent per year, the U.S. economy could grow out of this mess. But the politicians won’t do even that.

“Being from the Cato Institute, I actually do want to cut spending. But if all we’re trying to do is balance the budget over 10 years, which is sort of the minimal thing that politicians keep saying we should do, if we simply limit the growth of spending to 2 percent a year, which is about the projected rate of inflation, we’ll have a balanced budget in 2022. ... But instead, the politicians say, 'Oh, we’ll have draconian and savage budget cuts.' ... They don’t want to put government on a diet, even if that diet allows spending to grow 2 percent a year.”

They also continually mislead us about what their schemes will cost.

President Bush said the war in Iraq would cost $50 billion to $60 billion. It cost $800 billion. When Medicare Part A was created, the government said it would cost $9 billion in 1990. It cost $67 billion. They said the hiring of TSA airport security screeners would cost $100 million. Then they spent $700 million. Yet the media report the estimates as if they are realistic. Again and again, politicians get away with underestimating the cost of their programs.

Often the cost goes up because people change their behavior to get free stuff.

A program meant to help the needy costs a certain amount. The next year, it costs more, because now more of the needy know about the program and more social workers know how to tap it. The next year, the non-needy feel like suckers if they don’t get the handout, and they figure out a way to game the system.

Then, Mitchell point out, “what do politicians do the next year? They expand the program to buy more votes. And the year after that, they add a new benefit. That’s what’s happened with Medicare. It’s not just that they got the fundamental estimates wrong. They did. But every new generation of politicians figures out some new expansion, some new benefit.”
And so we’re on the road to Greece.

Bottom line: Don’t trust the politicians’ numbers.

John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. The show airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. and midnight ET. It re-airs Fridays at 10 p.m., Saturdays at 9 p.m. and 12 midnight, and Sundays at 10 p.m. (all times eastern). He's also the author of "Give Me a Break" and of "Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity." 

To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at http://www.creators.com/

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/02/15/are-on-road-to-bankruptcy/#ixzz1mwdlo2Xz

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/02/15/are-on-road-to-bankruptcy/

Obama Stimulus Turns Three: What Has It Achieved?

By JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 

President Obama, joined by Vice President Joe Biden, signs the $787 billion economic stimulus bill in Denver, Colo., on Feb. 17, 2009. AP View Enlarged Image

Without any fanfare whatsoever from the White House, February 17 marks the three-year anniversary of the day President Obama signed the much ballyhooed stimulus into law.

At the time, Obama claimed that it would "create or save" up to 3.5 million jobs, and that "a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed across America." The stimulus, would, he promised""ignite spending by businesses and consumers" and bring "real and lasting change for generations to come."

So three years later, how do the stimulus results stack up? Here's where various indicators stood in or around February 2009, and where they stand today.

Unemployment rate: The jobless rate is unchanged from February 2009 to January 2012, the latest month for which we have data. Both stood at 8.3%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Obama's economists had initially predicted that with the stimulus, unemployment would stay below 8%.

Number of long-term unemployed: The number of workers who have been unable to find a job in 27 months or more has shot up 83%, with their ranks now at 5.5 million.

Civilian labor force: It has shrunk by 126,000. In past recoveries, the labor force climbed an average of more than 3 million over comparable time periods.

Labor force participation: The share of adults in the labor force — either looking or working — has dropped 3% — also highly unusual in a recovery. At 63.7%, labor force participation is at a low not seen since the middle of the very deep 1981-82 recession, when fewer women were in the work force. A lower participation rate makes the unemployment rate look better.

Household income: Median annual household income is about 7% below where it was in February 2009, according to the Sentier Research Household Income Index.

National debt: Up $4.5 trillion, or 41%, according to the Treasury Department's monthly reports. The latest Treasury figures put the national debt at $15.4 trillion, larger than the entire U.S. economy.

Deficits: The deficit for fiscal year 2009 totaled $1.4 trillion. The Obama administration's proposed deficit for 2012 is $1.3 trillion, which would mark the fourth year of deficits topping $1 trillion.

Gross Domestic Product: Real GDP has climbed just 6% between Q1 2009 and Q4 2011, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Spending by consumers and businesses: Personal consumption has managed to climb 10% in the past three years, according to the BEA, but companies continue to hoard cash, with cash on hand up 27% since Q1 2009, according to the Federal Reserve Bank.

Stimulus price tag: The original estimate for the cost of the stimulus was $787 billion. Now the Congressional Budget Office says that, when all is said and done, it will have cost$825 billion .

Perhaps the best measure of the success or failure of the stimulus, however, is the fact that President Obama in his latest budget plan has called for still another round of stimulus spending, this time totaling $350 billion over the next four years, for what is labeled "short-term measures for jobs growth."

http://news.investors.com/article/601526/201202171525/obama-economic-stimulus-turns-three.htm

How 'Occupy' went wrong

By CANDICE M. GIOVE

On Dec. 6, nearly 300 members of the Occupy Wall Street movement flooded into East New York to begin what they considered phase two of their efforts. A few weeks earlier, they had been rousted from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, where they had camped for three months — attracting worldwide attention and forcing politicians to take notice.

But for all the hype, Occupy was being criticized — even from the left — for being vague in its goals. The signs railed against bailouts and the greed of the 1%, but protesters coalesced around no legislation, no candidate, no reforms. Everyone agreed that inequality is bad, but what to do about it?

“Occupy Our Homes” was that idea. The group would take over an empty house, foreclosed on by a bank, fix it up and provide shelter to a homeless family.

For those sympathetic to the Occupy movement, it was a brilliant strategy. Foreclosures touched almost every neighborhood in America; an estimated 1.2 million homes were repossessed in 2011. In East New York, the hardest hit in the city, the foreclosure crisis struck 16.8 homes per thousand. Occupy Our Homes would alleviate neighborhood blight, provide shelter to the poor — and put banks on the defensive.

PHOTOS: 'OCCUPY' TRASHES B'KLYN HOME

The atmosphere was giddy that overcast December day. A swell of people hung banners (“Foreclose on Banks, Not People”) and chanted on Vermont Street, waiting to welcome new neighbors to 702, the two-story rowhouse Occupy had taken over.

The excitement reached a crescendo when Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) knocked on the door, decorated with a pine wreath for Christmas, and out came the homeless man who was moving in with his family, Alfredo Carrasquillo.

Barron raised Carrasquillo’s arm in victory.

Last week,Wise Ahadzi opened the door to the house he still owns, 702 Vermont Street in East New York.

Inside is a war zone. The walls are torn down, the plumbing is ripped out and the carpeting has been plucked from the floor. It’s like walking through a ribcage.

Garbage, open food containers and Ahadzi’s possessions are tossed haphazardly around the house.

“This is where my kitchen was,” Ahadzi says. There is no sink, no refrigerator and no counter space. Instead there are dirty dishes piled high waiting for a dip in three large buckets of putrid water that serve as the dishwashing system.

In a first-floor bathroom, Christmas lights dangle from a shower curtain rod. The only thing separating a toilet from the elements outside is a thin veil of paper.

As he leaves the wreckage, Ahadzi pauses in front of a tiny Dora the Explorer chair. "Remember that?” he asks his daughter.

This is the Occupy house, more than two months later. A scarred symbol of what the movement has become.

Ahadzi, 28, was the man Occupy didn’t want the public to know about.He owned the Vermont house but was forced to leave in 2009 when he couldn’t make the mortgage payments to Bank of America.

The single father knew he couldn’t raise his two girls, Kwazha, 9, and Imani, 3, with the threat of eviction hanging over him. They found a lower-cost rental in Brownsville while Ahadzi negotiated with the bank to get his house back.

But instead of helping Ahadzi, Occupy cast Carrasquillo as the man to move in, because he was a homeless advocate some of the members knew.

During the December event, Ahadzi was pulled aside and made assurances by Barron and others — we know your predicament, we’ll make it better.

Ahadzi was content with that answer for a while, until it was obvious Occupy wasn’t interested in him.

They didn’t seem interested in the house, either. In January, The Post found squatters in the house instead of the family.

“They only stay here sometimes,” a protester explained. “There’s not enough room for the kids.”

Ahadzi thought about calling the police, until the embarrassed Occupy movement promised him that they’d repair the house and leave.

Two weeks have already gone by since without any progress. Occupy hasn’t even offered to pay him for the damages.

They tore down many interior walls but did not put them back up. A neighbor said that mold corroded one wall, but a complete gutting of the house was unnecessary.

Even in this condition, protesters are still squatting on the floors, cooking using a bunsen burner and walking around guided by candlelight when a generator is not up and running.

Their efforts have actually made the neighborhood worse — because what used to be an empty house is now a hovel of squatters and probably should be condemned.

Things have gotten so bad that Barron,who once praised the movement, said that Occupy has worn out its welcome.

“The bottom line is that they have to leave,” he said.

Neighbors, who initially welcomed the ragtag bunch into the area, now stay away. Local Doyle Coleman tried to get other homeowners on the street to participate in a street cleanup with the Occupiers, but they all just said, “I don’t want to get involved.”

Another neighbor stood across the street from the house and shook his head, imagining how extensive the damages were inside considering the revolving cast of characters living inside. “It must be in shambles,” he said.

Occupy protesters like to take pride in how organic the movement is.
Adbusters Media Foundation, a Canadian group known for an anti-consumerism magazine, is credited with coining the term “occupy” last summer, but no group wholly dictates what happens.

Instead, Occupy gathers for General Assembly meetings held twice a week in a corner of Zuccotti Park. Members sign up to speak or pitch proposals. The crowd “twinkles their fingers” to support things or wriggles them pointing down to stand against them. Consensus is reached by a sea of dancing fingers.

While this is socialist by design, it makes decision making difficult. The group would debate endlessly how to use the $700,000 it raised, and even when it would spend some of that money — on bail or food — it would be accused by some members of misappropriation.

A group of 20 actually controls the money but were constantly saying they weren’t the “leaders” — more to avoid backlash from other Occupy members than anything else. When a protest becomes a live-in and not a march, meanwhile, the line between activists and freeloaders blurs.

Zuccotti Park, and its promise of free clothes, free supplies and free meals, attracted the city’s homeless. Rumors began to spread inside the park that shelters even recommended Zuccotti’s hospitality at intake.

Many of those freeloaders stuck with the movement long after the collapse of the encampment, because OWS has provided shelter to its members at two city churches. Until, that is, someone at a Manhattan church stole the lid of the baptismal font. The Rev. Bob Brashear told his guests that the theft was like “pissing on the 99%.”

OWS has often hurt the same people it says it wants to help. During the Zuccotti days, a mom and pop cafe’s bathroom was ravaged and its owner was left with thousands of dollars in damages.

The movement’s lack of leaders only made things more chaotic and confusing as the months have gone on.

There were marches, arrests and plenty of YouTube videos of protesters getting pepper-sprayed. In the end, though, it appeared that eliciting these kind of moments—provoking the police until they overreacted — was the movement’s primary, if not only, goal.

Occupy Wall Street will no doubt dismiss this article as just another media attack. But the truth is their initial rhetoric had more resonance than they might think— from many political leanings.

Ask someone at a Tea Party protest if they supported the bailout of Wall Street banks. Their answer would be the same as the bandanna-wearing protester on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The most popular book among conservatives these days is “Coming Apart,” Charles Murray’s analysis of the widening gulf between classes.

It’s hard to find anyone who disagrees with Occupy’s prognosis of what’s wrong. A Gallup poll conducted in January found that 83% of Americans were dissatisfied with the economy. Where people differ is the solutions.

To that end, what are Occupy’s solutions? In the New York Times Review of Books earlier this month, writer Michael Greenberg, obviously sympathetic to the movement, couldn’t contain his frustration with protesters unwillingness to get involved in issues such as the Keystone Pipeline because “it didn’t matter what laws you pass.”

Greenberg called their goals “morally abstract, with little visceral impact." And demanding economic justice was a “vague and sweeping term that invites both personal grievances and broad interpretation”— of which Occupy has plenty.

Since the group does not support any political candidates, Democrats are free to ignore Occupy — which many moderate members are happy to do. Without any leaders, the occupation’s small work groups and offshoots are also just too unpredictable and risky to support.

The 2012 election, in fact, is shaping up to be the inverse of the 2010 midterms. In those congressional races, Republican candidates mostly had to embrace and praise the Tea Party movement to avoid incurring its wrath. In 2012, Democrats, especially in swing states, will likely be spending their time making sure they’re not too closely associated with the Occupiers.

Occupy promises a return to larger protests in the spring, under the general banner of “raising awareness about inequality.”

But is any American really unaware of inequality? Does anyone need to be told that more people need jobs, that the middle class and the poor are suffering?

With banners and signs and slogans, Occupy “raised awareness” of the inequities of foreclosures. Then they left a wretched a house in Brooklyn, with an owner wondering who’s going to clean up the mess.

“I’m pissed off,”Ahadzi said. “I’m trying to get my house back, and they’re trying to take it from me.”

Occupy has shown it’s good at tearing things down. What happens if it had to fix them?

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/how_occupy_went_wrong_PbpcKJgxQg1FiU4D7vdefI#ixzz1n4kjJR9y

Why Should the Taxpayers Subsidize Electric Vehicles?

Why Should the Taxpayers Subsidize Electric Vehicles?

by John Hinderaker in Energy Policy, Obama administration

Well, they shouldn’t. Scott Rasmussen published a survey a few days ago in which only 29% of Americans supported subsidies for electric cars, which means that the average American is smarter than the Obama administration. There are a number of ideas why subsidizing electric cars, like pretty much every “green” energy scheme, is a bad idea; Michael Ramirez notes just one of them. Where do you suppose all that electricity comes from?



Note, too, that as the Obama administration feverishly tries to put power plants out of business with onerous new regulations, the effect will be to force the cost of driving electric vehicles higher and higher.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/why-should-the-taxpayers-subsidize-electric-vehicles.php

You Thought Solyndra Was Bad? There's More On the Way

You thought Solyndra’s green energy taxpayer rip-off was something? Well there are plenty more equally colorful crony catastrophes where that came from. I’ll mention just a few that haven’t gotten much attention.

Of the stimulus grants so far, more than 80 percent have gone to wind farms (covering up to 30% of all project costs). A Meadow Lake wind development project in Indiana that is owned and operated by Horizon Wind Energy received $276 million. Horizon is a wholly owned subsidiary of EDP Renovaveis, a Portuguese company. The turbines are manufactured by Vestas in Denmark, and are mounted atop 350 foot towers imported from Vietnam. EDP and Horizon also own and operate the Blackstone wind farm in Illinois that received a $171 million grant.

When it comes to breezy U.S. wind shenanigans, Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, believes that General Electric’s Shepherd Flat project in northern Oregon is worst in blowing lots of taxpayer resources. Not only did the Energy Department give GE and their partners a $1.6 billion loan guarantee, but as soon as the turbines start running, the Treasury Department will ante up an additional $490 million cash grant.

According to plan, an important intent of this charity is to create 35 permanent new “green energy jobs”. Focusing upon just the $490 million cash grant alone, some skeptics may question whether the taxpayer cost of $16.3 million for each of those jobs might be just a little bit steep.

The Shepherd Flat deal is so lucrative for investors that even some of President Obama’s top advisors including former energy policy czar Carol Browning and economic advisor Larry Summers thought it was lousy. Their October 2010 memo observed that the project backers had “little skin in the game” while the government would be providing “a significant subsidy (65+ percent).” The memo went on to say that while the sponsor’s contribution amounted to only about 11 percent of the total cost, they would receive an “estimated return on equity of 30 percent.” It also explained that the carbon dioxide reductions associated with the project “…would have to be valued at $130 per ton for CO2 for the climate benefits to equal the subsidies…more than six times the primary estimate used by the government in evaluating rules.”

Here’s another one for our Left Coast friends. Idaho Winds LLC which represents eight wind farms has hatched a plan to take advantage of California’s carbon cap-and-trade lunacy. They have petitioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve the sale of renewable energy credits to a third party. Idaho Winds would then immediately buy the power back, leaving just the credits which the third party would sell to a California utility. So in essence, no energy would actually be sold…just California credits for wind power sold in another state.

The shell game is driven by laws in California and other western states requiring that renewable sources provide a certain percentage of the state’s energy use, and providing that each unit a utility buys or produces receives credit. A loopy loophole allows California utilities to “unbundle” the energy and energy credits following an initial purchase, and then just buy the credits. Idaho doesn’t have such a law, so its utilities don’t need the credits. If allowed by FERC, it will enable Idaho to literally create energy credits out of thin air and sell them to California utilities that pass on those costs to their unlucky customers.

Our U.S. Navy is spending lots of our green to go green too. They recently committed $12 million to purchase 450,000 gallons of biofuel at about $26.75 per gallon in order to offset requirements for standard JP-5 aircraft jet fuel that costs less than $3 per gallon. The good news is that the total fuel price will be only about five times more (rather than 9 times) after it is mixed with the standard stuff.

But then again, the real cost to American taxpayers is more than that. The biofuel is being produced through a contract with Dynamic Fuels, a partnership of three firms including Solazyme which previously received $27.7 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus money) to build its biorefinery. Coincidentally, T.J. Glauthier, a Solazyme strategic advisor, served on the Obama White House transition team where he focused on Recovery Act energy issues.

And get this…that green fuel purchased with green tax money will be consumed in naval air exercises near Hawaii next summer by…now get ready for this…the “Great Green Fleet Carrier Strike Force”.

Do you suppose their mascot will be the Jolly Green Giant? (Ho-Ho-Ho.)

How much are you willing to pay for a plug-in hybrid electric car? A Chevy Volt with a $41,000 sticker price maybe? Would you buy one of those if someone else threw in a $7,500 cash-back incentive; and an additional $5,000 if you live in California? Okay, okay… what if the real vehicle production cost amounted to thousands of dollars more, and someone else chipped in the difference?

Well someone already is, whether you buy one or not. Any guess who that might be? Look in the mirror for a clue.

Subject to meeting various employment and other milestones, U.S. taxpayers will kick in about $3 billion in federal and state loans, rebates, grants and tax credits towards Volt production. This includes $2.4 billion from the federal government, plus $690.4 million from the state of Michigan.

Some of these contributions will go to GM directly, while others will flow through companies that supply Volt parts to them. For example, the Department of Energy awarded a $105.9 million grant to GM’s Brownstone plant that assembles the batteries, and its Hamtramck assembly plant received nearly the same amount in state credits to construct facilities for electric drive systems.

Delphi Automotive Systems, a former GM division, received $89.3 million to expand manufacturing facilities for electric drive power components, and Compact Power, a company that supplies Volt batteries, has been awarded up to $100 million in refundable battery credits through a combination of tax breaks and cash subsidies.

But even with spectacular deals like these, GM has so far only managed to sell about 8,000 of their vaunted Obamacars. And despite another big gift we gave them in the form of a huge TARP bailout, the prognosis doesn’t look good at all. Volt’s lack of spark promises to be yet another in a long series of Obama green program fizzles.

---

This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/16/you-thought-solyndra-was-bad-theres-more-on-the-way/

Why We Honor George Washington

Why We Honor George Washington

   

by David Boaz

Today is some vaguely named “Presidents’ Day,” but Wednesday is the anniversary of George Washington’s birth. So it’s a good day to remember the contribution he made to the American republic. I wrote this several years ago:

George Washington was the man who established the American republic. He led the revolutionary army against the British Empire, he served as the first president, and most importantly he stepped down from power.

John Trumbull, "General George Washington Resigning His Commission"

In an era of brilliant men, Washington was not the deepest thinker. 

He never wrote a book or even a long essay, unlike George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams. But Washington made the ideas of the American founding real. He incarnated liberal and republican ideas in his own person, and he gave them effect through the Revolution, the Constitution, his successful presidency, and his departure from office.

What’s so great about leaving office? Surely it matters more what a president does in office. But think about other great military commanders and revolutionary leaders before and after Washington—Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin. They all seized the power they had won and held it until death or military defeat.

John Adams said, “He was the best actor of presidency we have ever had.” Indeed, Washington was a person very conscious of his reputation, who worked all his life to develop his character and his image.

In our own time Joshua Micah Marshall writes of America’s first president, “It was all a put-on, an act.” Marshall missed the point. Washington understood that character is something you develop. He learned from Aristotle that good conduct arises from habits that in turn can only be acquired by repeated action and correction – “We are what we repeatedly do.” Indeed, the word “ethics” comes from the Greek word for “habit.” We say something is “second nature” because it’s not actually natural; it’s a habit we’ve developed. From reading the Greek philosophers and the Roman statesmen, Washington developed an understanding of character, in particular the character appropriate to a gentleman in a republic of free citizens.

What values did Washington’s character express? He was a farmer, a businessman, an enthusiast for commerce. As a man of the Enlightenment, he was deeply interested in scientific farming. His letters on running Mount Vernon are longer than letters on running the government. (Of course, in 1795 more people worked at Mount Vernon than in the entire executive branch of the federal government.)

He was also a liberal and tolerant man. In a famous letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, he hailed the “liberal policy” of the United States on religious freedom as worthy of emulation by other countries. He explained, “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

And most notably, he held “republican” values – that is, he believed in a republic of free citizens, with a government based on consent and established to protect the rights of life, liberty, and property.

From his republican values Washington derived his abhorrence of kingship, even for himself. The writer Garry Wills called him “a virtuoso of resignations.” He gave up power not once but twice – at the end of the revolutionary war, when he resigned his military commission and returned to Mount Vernon, and again at the end of his second term as president, when he refused entreaties to seek a third term. In doing so, he set a standard for American presidents that lasted until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose taste for power was stronger than the 150 years of precedent set by Washington.

Give the last word to Washington’s great adversary, King George III. The king asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what Washington would do after winning independence. West replied, “They say he will return to his farm.”

“If he does that,” the incredulous monarch said, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”

 http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/why-we-honor-george-washington/

Obama Likes High Gasoline Prices, But Won't Admit It

Obama Likes High Gasoline Prices, But Won't Admit It

Energy Policy: If gasoline prices so far are any indication, the pain at the pump will be severe this year. But if you think President Obama cares, you're wrong. If anything, he's secretly cheering it on.

Already, average pump prices have topped $3.50 a gallon, leading some experts to think they could reach an all-time high of $5 by the summer.
So what's Obama's response? He treats it like a badge of honor, saying this week that "gas prices are on the rise again because as the economy strengthens, global demand for oil increases."

But what else can he say?

During his presidential campaign, Obama admitted he didn't have a problem with sky-high gasoline prices, he just "would have preferred a gradual adjustment."

His choice for energy secretary, Steven Chu, certainly doesn't mind them. Before joining the administration he said that "somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."

And last year, Chu claimed "the price of gasoline over the long haul should be expected to go up."

At the same time, Obama has repeatedly feigned an inability to do anything about oil prices. Last April, he said: "I'm just going to be honest with you. There's not much we can do next week or two weeks from now."But this simply isn't true.

The country is virtually awash in oil, with as much as 1.4 trillion "recoverable" barrels now available, thanks to new discoveries and advanced drilling technologies, according to the Institute for Energy Research.

That's about twice the proved reserves in all of OPEC. But much of it is off-limits due to federal restrictions.

If Obama were to announce an aggressive effort to tap our vast domestic oil riches, it would have an immediate effect on prices. If you don't think so, consider how prices immediately dropped when President Bush simply announced plans to lift a presidential moratorium on offshore drilling in 2008.

Obama says the recent modest increase in domestic production is proof he's not anti-oil. But this happened despite his policies, not because of them — largely the result of drilling permits issued under Clinton and Bush, and the oil boom on private lands in North Dakota.

Whenever Obama has had the chance to encourage production, he's done the opposite:

• He needlessly halted Gulf drilling permits after the BP oil spill, and continues to slow-walk them. Permit approvals are less than half their pre-Obama average, and approval times have nearly doubled.

• Obama scuttled the 700,000-barrels-a-day Keystone XL pipeline, despite approval by the State Department after an exhaustive three-year review.

• And he endlessly demonizes oil companies while pushing to sharply raise their taxes.

The truth is that for Obama, low gas prices are the problem, since they would hamper progress toward his "green" Nirvana, where we all hop on government trains and putter around in government-approved electric cars. It's just that he's smart enough not to say this out loud.

http://news.investors.com/article/601510/201202161851/obama-likes-high-gasoline-prices-.htm?src=IBDDAE

Over-regulated America

The home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation

AMERICANS love to laugh at ridiculous regulations. A Florida law requires vending-machine labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which.

Bureaucratic busybodies in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down children’s lemonade stands because the enterprising young moppets did not have trading licences. The list goes hilariously on.

But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively. America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire. Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse. Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal.

Consider the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. Its aim was noble: to prevent another financial crisis. Its strategy was sensible, too: improve transparency, stop banks from taking excessive risks, prevent abusive financial practices and end “too big to fail” by authorising regulators to seize any big, tottering financial firm and wind it down. This newspaper supported these goals at the time, and we still do. But Dodd-Frank is far too complex, and becoming more so. At 848 pages, it is 23 times longer than Glass-Steagall, the reform that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929. Worse, every other page demands that regulators fill in further detail. Some of these clarifications are hundreds of pages long.

Just one bit, the “Volcker rule”, which aims to curb risky proprietary trading by banks, includes 383 questions that break down into 1,420 subquestions.
Hardly anyone has actually read Dodd-Frank, besides the Chinese government and our correspondent in New York (see article). Those who have struggle to make sense of it, not least because so much detail has yet to be filled in: of the 400 rules it mandates, only 93 have been finalised. So financial firms in America must prepare to comply with a law that is partly unintelligible and partly unknowable.

Flaming water-skis

Dodd-Frank is part of a wider trend. Governments of both parties keep adding stacks of rules, few of which are ever rescinded. Republicans write rules to thwart terrorists, which make flying in America an ordeal and prompt legions of brainy migrants to move to Canada instead. Democrats write rules to expand the welfare state. Barack Obama’s health-care reform of 2010 had many virtues, especially its attempt to make health insurance universal. But it does little to reduce the system’s staggering and increasing complexity. Every hour spent treating a patient in America creates at least 30 minutes of paperwork, and often a whole hour. Next year the number of federally mandated categories of illness and injury for which hospitals may claim reimbursement will rise from 18,000 to 140,000. There are nine codes relating to injuries caused by parrots, and three relating to burns from flaming water-skis.

Two forces make American laws too complex. One is hubris. Many lawmakers seem to believe that they can lay down rules to govern every eventuality. Examples range from the merely annoying (eg, a proposed code for nurseries in Colorado that specifies how many crayons each box must contain) to the delusional (eg, the conceit of Dodd-Frank that you can anticipate and ban every nasty trick financiers will dream up in the future). Far from preventing abuses, complexity creates loopholes that the shrewd can abuse with impunity.

The other force that makes American laws complex is lobbying. The government’s drive to micromanage so many activities creates a huge incentive for interest groups to push for special favours. When a bill is hundreds of pages long, it is not hard for congressmen to slip in clauses that benefit their chums and campaign donors. The health-care bill included tons of favours for the pushy. Congress’s last, failed attempt to regulate greenhouse gases was even worse.

Complexity costs money. Sarbanes-Oxley, a law aimed at preventing Enron-style frauds, has made it so difficult to list shares on an American stockmarket that firms increasingly look elsewhere or stay private. America’s share of initial public offerings fell from 67% in 2002 (when Sarbox passed) to 16% last year, despite some benign tweaks to the law. A study for the Small Business Administration, a government body, found that regulations in general add $10,585 in costs per employee. It’s a wonder the jobless rate isn’t even higher than it is.

A plea for simplicity

Democrats pay lip service to the need to slim the rulebook—Mr Obama’s regulations tsar is supposed to ensure that new rules are cost-effective. But the administration has a bias towards overstating benefits and underestimating costs (see article). Republicans bluster that they will repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank and abolish whole government agencies, but give only a sketchy idea of what should replace them.

America needs a smarter approach to regulation. First, all important rules should be subjected to cost-benefit analysis by an independent watchdog. The results should be made public before the rule is enacted. All big regulations should also come with sunset clauses, so that they expire after, say, ten years unless Congress explicitly re-authorises them.

More important, rules need to be much simpler. When regulators try to write an all-purpose instruction manual, the truly important dos and don’ts are lost in an ocean of verbiage. Far better to lay down broad goals and prescribe only what is strictly necessary to achieve them. Legislators should pass simple rules, and leave regulators to enforce them.

Would this hand too much power to unelected bureaucrats? Not if they are made more accountable. Unreasonable judgments should be subject to swift appeal. Regulators who make bad decisions should be easily sackable. None of this will resolve the inevitable difficulties of regulating a complex modern society. But it would mitigate a real danger: that regulation may crush the life out of America’s economy.

http://www.economist.com/node/21547789

Federal Workers Need To Be Part Of The Shared Sacrifice

Campaigning: The Obama budget is a miserably flawed document in so many ways. But it's more than a mere toxic spending package. It's also a political compact the president is hoping will generate support.
Included in President Obama's 2013 budget is a pay raise for federal workers. Yeah, it's only a 0.5% increase. But the federal work force is not one that deserves a raise. It's a work force that needs to be cut.

Government workers, we are told, are civil servants. But the nation's roughly 2.1 million federal civilian workers live more like masters. Their average compensation is twice that of private sector workers (see chart), and in terms of only wages, federal employee pay is about 60% higher — $50,462 per year in private industry compared to $81,258 when working for Washington .

And what does the rest of the country get in return for the generous compensation enjoyed by federal workers?

Nothing, as far as we can tell.

In fact, we'd make the argument that the taxpayers are getting a negative return on their "investment." Federal employees don't create jobs. Nor do they produce wealth.

Instead, a large army of federal workers regulates, administrates, classifies, oversees, coordinates, pencil-pushes and in general gets in the way of this country's economic machine.

And it votes, too. Which is why Obama wishes to reward its members with a pay raise, but moreover refuses to thin its ranks. He wants to solidify for his party the support of a voting bloc and at the same time fish for help in winning a second term using taxpayers' money.
Nearly four years ago, Obama made a similar effort but used a different approach.

As a candidate, he "wrote a series of letters to (federal) workers that offer detailed descriptions of how he intends to add muscle to specific government programs, (and) give new power to bureaucrats," the Washington Post reported after the 2008 election.

The country needs to be headed in the fully opposite direction, toward a federal government with fewer workers whose salaries and benefits are in line with those in the private sector. That won't happen, though, if Obama gets a second term.

http://news.investors.com/Article/601291/201202151830/obama-wants-federal-workers-votes.htm?src=IBDDAE

Insurers see costs in Obama birth control rule

Insurers see costs in Obama birth control rule

By Lewis Krauskopf
(Reuters) - The Obama administration maintains that its plan to have health insurers pay for birth control offered to employees of religious groups won't end up costing the industry. But insurers aren't so confident.Last Friday, President Barack Obama sought to placate outraged leaders of the Catholic church, which opposes contraception, by making insurers responsible for providing the free birth control.

Obama's 2010 healthcare law mandates free contraception. The administration exempted houses of worship from the rule, but requires coverage be made available to employees of religiously affiliated organizations such as hospitals and universities.

The administration has said insurers should ultimately make up any initial costs by avoiding expenses associated with unintended pregnancies. But a new survey of 15 large health plans shows they are dubious of such savings.

Asked what impact the requirement will have on their costs in the year to two years after it goes into effect, 40 percent of the participants said they expect the requirement will increase costs through higher pharmacy expenses.

The survey of pharmacy directors at the health plans was conducted on Wednesday by Reimbursement Intelligence, which advises pharmaceutical, medical device and other companies on reimbursement issues. The firm did not name the insurance plans it surveyed.

Of the health plans, 20 percent said costs would even out because they already budget for contraception in the premium, 6.7 percent said it would drive up pharmacy costs but decrease medical costs, while 33.3 percent weren't sure. None said it would lead to net savings.

"They think it will raise pharmacy costs and won't lower medical costs," said Rhonda Greenapple, chief executive officer of Reimbursement Intelligence. "The idea that preventative care is going to reduce overall healthcare costs, they don't buy it."

Last week, insurers including Aetna Inc questioned the precedent set by Obama's plan that would force them to pay for coverage with no clear way of recouping the expense.

But insurers may still seek ways to pass through such costs, either by increasing premiums to the same employers or to other corporate clients.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said its concerns were not addressed by Obama's compromise, and noted that insurance plans would likely cover the birth control costs out of the larger pool of revenue they make from their contract with a religious employer.

(Reporting By Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Gerald E. McCormick)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/16/us-usa-contraception-insurers-idUSTRE81F1UI20120216?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Six More Things Everyone Should Know About the HHS...

USCCB Blog: Six More Things Everyone Should Know About the HHS...:

1. The rule that created the uproar has not changed at all, but was finalized as is. Friday evening, after a day of touting meaningful changes in the mandate, HHS issued a regulation finalizing the rule first issued in August 2011, “without change.” So religious employers dedicated to serving people of other faiths are still not exempt as “religious employers.” Indeed, the rule describes them as “non-exempt.”

2. The rule leaves open the possibility that even exempt “religious employers” will be forced to cover sterilization. In its August 2011 comments, USCCB warned that the narrow “religious employer” exemption appeared to provide no relief from the sterilization mandate—only the contraception mandate—and specifically sought clarification. (We also noted that a sterilization mandate exists in only one state, Vermont.) HHS provided no clarification, so the risk remains under the unchanged final rule.

3. The new “accommodation” is not a current rule, but a promise that comes due beyond the point of public accountability. Also on Friday evening, HHS issued regulations describing the intention to develop more regulations that would apply the same mandate differently to “non-exempt, non-profit religious organizations”—the charities, schools, and hospitals that are still left out of the “religious employer” exemption. These policies will be developed over a one-year delay in enforcement, so if they turn out badly, their impact will not be felt until August 2013, well after the election.

 

4. Even if the promises of “accommodation” are fulfilled entirely, religious charities, schools, and hospitals will still be forced to violate their beliefs. If an employee of these second-class-citizen religious institutions wants coverage of contraception or sterilization, the objecting employer is still forced to pay for it as a part of the employer’s insurance plan. There can be no additional cost to that employee, and the coverage is not a separate policy. By process of elimination, the funds to pay for that coverage must come from the premiums of the employer and fellow employees, even those who object in conscience.

5. The “accommodation” does not even purport to help objecting insurers, for-profit religious employers, secular employers, or individuals. In its August 2011 comments, and many times since, USCCB identified all the stakeholders in the process whose religious freedom is threatened—all employers, insurers, and individuals, not just religious employers. Friday’s actions emphasize that all insurers, including self-insurers, must provide the coverage to any employee who wants it. In turn, all individuals who pay premiums have no escape from subsidizing that coverage. And only employers that are both non-profit and religious may qualify for the “accommodation.”

 

6. Beware of claims, especially by partisans, that the bishops are partisan. The bishops and their staff read regulations before evaluating them. The bishops did not pick this fight in an election year—others did. Bishops form their positions based on principles—here, religious liberty for all, and the life and dignity of every human person—not polls, personalities, or political parties. Bishops are duty bound to proclaim these principles, in and out of season.

Here are USCCB's first "six things" on the HHS mandate.

http://usccbmedia.blogspot.com/2012/02/six-more-things-everyone-should-know.html?spref=bl

The scourge of deregulation: Barbers, arborists...

The scourge of deregulation: Barbers, arborists...

byTimothy P. Carney Senior Political Columnist

President Obama has been using "deregulation" as a curse word since the 2008 campaign, and many liberals writing about lobbying tend to assume that all big business ever wants is deregulation.

But deregulation is often about freeing up small business from underneath the yoke of anti-competitive rules that serve mostly to protect big, existing businesses from upstart competition, thus hurting consumers and entrepreneurs.
A couple lawmakers in Minnesota want to roll back some of these regs:

The bill would allow an entrepreneur to pursue a job or career without getting licensed by the state as long as they aren’t posing a threat to public health or safety. The examples they gave include a barber, masseuse, or tree trimmer.

Jim Dolphy owned a tree trimming business in Inver Grove Heights, Minn. He stood with lawmakers during their announcement at the Capitol Monday and shared his experience with licensing requirements.

Dolphy said he had his business for five years. When a tornado hit Minneapolis in 2009, he got a lot of job calls. But because of city rules, he wasn’t allowed to work, he was forced to leave.

“The cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul and others have created a licensing law that requires a certified arborist to be on staff to be able to do business in those cities. This licensing law is ridiculous,” said Dolphy. ” A certified arborist is not required in my company for us to safely and effectively do our jobs operations.”

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/scourge-deregulation-barbers-arborists/377211

Bringing Congress to bear on Eric Holder

Bringing Congress to bear on Eric Holder—Michael A. Walsh - NYPOST.com
It’s time to return Holder’s contempt

By MICHAEL A. WALSH

‘Contempt of Congress” is a pretty strong term, and one with tangible legal consequences, but how else to describe Attorney General Eric Holder’s continuing obstructionism in the burgeoning Fast and Furious scandal?

It’s been 14 months since news broke that a federal agent had been killed with weapons that Holder’s Justice Department intentionally allowed to cross the border into Mexico, with no plan on how to track them and without alerting Mexican officials. In all, the Obama administration sent thousands of guns south to the drug gangs under the misbegotten operation.

But since last May, Eric Holder has been stonewalling congressional attempts to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious — a mess hatched on his watch by Obama appointees at the office of the US attorney for Arizona and agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

On Tuesday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif) — whose House Oversight Committee is leading the congressional investigation — sent Holder another in a series of stern letters, demanding that Justice comply with committee subpoenas that it’s been pretty much ignoring since Oct. 12.

The letter was prompted by Justice’s failure to meet a Feb. 9 deadline to make witnesses available and turn over hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of internal documents. Holder’s crew requested a further extension — while publicly decrying Issa’s probe as a political witch hunt.

Of course, as Issa writes, it’s Justice’s own “delay tactics” that “have extended this investigation into a presidential-election year.” Indeed, “had the department demonstrated willingness to cooperate with this investigation from the outset — instead of attempting to cover up its own internal mismanagement — this investigation likely would have concluded” last year.

“In reality,” Issa continues, “it is the department that is playing political gotcha games, instead of allowing a co-equal branch of government to perform its constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch.
“We cannot wait any longer for the deparment’s cooperation.”

Tough words. But will there ever be more than words?

Issa’s letter still offers Holder an out: “Please specify a date by which you expect the department to produce all documents responsive to the subpoena.”

But it’s clear Holder is trying to stall through Election Day. Holder and President Obama are joined at the hip, and if Holder falls, the president is severely damaged. Were Democrats to regain control of the House, they could shut down Issa’s probe.

So what can Issa do?

As he pointedly notes in his letter, willful failure to comply with a congressional investigation is a federal misdemeanor, “punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than 12 months.”

Easier said than done. Issa’s full committee would have to approve a contempt citation and then forward it to the full (Republican-dominated) House for approval by a majority vote. After that, it goes to the US attorney for the District of Columbia, “whose duty it shall be” to take it to a grand jury. But the US attorney for DC is another Obama appointee — who reports to Holder. Think there might be more delays?

Since 1975, 10 high officials have been cited for contempt; most cases ended with negotiated agreements between the White House and Congress. Sometimes, as in the case of former Environmental Protection Agency chief Anne Gorsuch in 1982, Justice simply refuses to prosecute. The last contempt citation acted on was in 1983, against former EPA official Rita Lavelle, who got a fine and prison term for lying to Congress.

These fights don’t go quickly, so Issa and the House GOP leadership must up the ante now. Holder’s plainly not going to voluntarily comply with Issa’s subpoenas; presumably, the evidence would just be too explosive.

One approach may be to start pushing other federal agencies; in more news, a federal agent is now saying that the Homeland Security Department knew more about Fast and Furious than has been disclosed — to the extent of even blocking some gun transfers from ATF to the bad guys.

The shell game has gone on long enough. The country deserves answers — not gotcha games.

For months now, Holder has been dodging, obfuscating, withholding evidence and outright lying in his attempt to evade responsibility for the deadly program that has cost the lives of two federal agents and countless Mexican nationals.

Contempt of Congress? Contempt for the American people is more like it.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/it_time_to_return_holder_contempt_pw6HxNVJifwkZmabXSVZNP#ixzz1mkRqJExu

Who Killed the Jobs?--epic failed recovery in graph

Who Killed the Jobs?

by John Hinderaker in Economy, Obama administration

This chart tells you just about everything you need to know as you prepare to vote in 2012. Prepared by the Republican Study Committee, it depicts the percentage of Americans in the labor force from January 2005 (commonly known as the “good old days” through January 2012. The decline in the number of working Americans is staggering. And note that Barack Obama became president in January 2009, about 3/4 of the way through the gray “recession,” and just before the “stimulus” that is marked with a red dot. What has happened since Obama took office is that the jobs situation has steadily deteriorated:



I have written many times that inefficient spending cannot create jobs. Rather, wasteful spending destroys wealth and thereby destroys jobs, too. That thesis is amply borne out by the experience of recent years.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/who-killed-the-jobs.php

Obamacare: Signs and portents--electoral despotism from a fanatical O

Obamacare: Signs and portents

by Scott Johnson in Obamacare

In his third post on Obamacare in the light of the HHS “preventive care” mandate, Paul Rahe considers whether it is a mistake or a portent. He concludes:

[T]here can be only one reason why Sebelius, Pelosi, and Obama decided to proceed. They wanted to show the bishops and the Catholic laity who is boss. They wanted to make those who think contraception wrong and abortion a species of murder complicit in both. They wanted to rub the noses of their opponents in it. They wanted to marginalize them. Humiliation was, in fact, their only aim, and malice, their motive.

Last week, when, in response to the fierce resistance he had deliberately stirred up, the President offered the bishops what he called “an accommodation,” what he proffered was nothing more than a fig leaf. His maneuver was, in fact, a gesture of contempt, and I believe that it was Barack Obama’s final offer. From his perspective and from that of Sebelius and Pelosi, the genuine Catholics still within the Democratic coalition are no more than what Vladimir Lenin called “useful idiots,” and, now that the progressive project is near completion, they are expendable – for there is no longer any need to curry their favor.

In his piece in The Washington Examiner…, Michael Barone mentioned Obama’s decree with regard to contraception and abortifacients in tandem with a brief discussion of the President’s decision to reject the construction of the Keystone Pipeline. He was, I think, right to do so – for there is no good reason that any student of public policy can cite for doing what the President did. Cancelling the pipeline will not delay or stop the extraction of oil from the tar sands in Alberta, and the pipeline itself would pose no environmental threat. If the President’s decision had any purpose, it was symbolic – an indication to all that he cared not one whit about the plight of the white working class and that he was capable of punishing those whom he does not like and more than willing to do so.

In 2008, when he first ran for the Presidency, Barack Obama posed as a moderate most of the time. This time, he is openly running as a radical. His aim is to win a mandate for the fundamental transformation of the United States that he promised in passing on the eve of his election four years ago and that he promised again when he called his administration The New Foundation. In the process, he intends to reshape the Democratic coalition – to bring the old hypocrisy to an end, to eliminate those who stand in the way of the final consolidation of the administrative entitlements state, to drive out the faithful Catholics once and for all, to jettison the white working class, and to build a new American regime on a coalition of highly educated upper-middle class whites, feminists, African-Americans, Hispanics, illegal immigrants, and those belonging to the public-sector unions. To Americans outside this coalition, he intends to show no mercy.

Mark my words. If Barack Obama wins in November, he will force the Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, and the bishops, priests, and nuns who fostered the steady growth of the administrative entitlements state, thinking that they were pursuing “the common good,” will reap what they have sown.

In the end, politics has as its focus persuasion. Our difficulties are a function of policy, not of mismanagement. If we are to stop Barack Obama in 2012, we will have to find a standard-bearer who can articulate a compelling argument against the administrative entitlements state and, by means of persuasion and praxis, reverse our democracy’s inexorable soft despotic drift. Let us hope that one or another of the remaining candidates rises to the occasion.

Professor Rahe is the author, among other distinguished books, of Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift. His reading of our situation packs a special punch.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/obamacare-signs-and-portents.php

Record 19 reporters, media execs join Team Obama

Record 19 reporters, media execs join Team Obama

byPaul Bedard

For some Washington reporters and media execs, cheering their team from the sidelines just isn’t good enough: Tugging on a red, white and blue Team Obama jersey is the answer.

That’s the case for a whopping 19 journalists and media executives, including five from the Washington Post and three each from ABC and CNN, who’ve gone into the administration or center-left groups supporting the president.

Those inside the administration hit 14 this month when the Post’s Stephen Barr joined the Labor Department. That’s a record, say some revolving door watchers, and could even be much higher: The Post reports that “dozens” of former journalists have joined the administration, although Washington Secrets couldn’t verify that tally.

Many are in communications and speech writing offices, most prominently Jay Carney, the president’s spokesman who ran Time’s Washington bureau, and husband to ABC’s Claire Shipman. Some joined as the news business collapsed, many to finally voice their politics, and others, notably former Transportation spokeswoman Jill Zuckman, because she liked her future boss, Secretary Ray LaHood, a rare Republican in the administration. That relationship rocked: LaHood broke through the lower-tier Cabinet P.R. ceiling to become one of the most well-known Transportation secretaries ever. She had worked for the Chicago Tribune.

The revolving door isn’t a surprise to critics of the media and Obama. “The number of reporters going into the Obama administration merely confirms what I knew and what most conservatives long believed,” said Noam Neusner, himself one of the few reporters hired as a Bush speech writer. “There is a vast supply of liberals in newsrooms, they are very happy to support Obama administration policies if they can get hired and they barely hide their ideology in the way they cover the news.” Neusner, who I worked with at U.S. News, said that he too might have been guilty of a pro-Bush bias, but said correctly: “My editors and colleagues were surprised to hear that I was a Republican.”

A former GOP Capitol Hill and cabinet spokesman added, “It’s frustrating to see so many reporters that had relationships with trusted sources give up their ‘impartiality’ and start playing for the other side. It does show that the game is stacked in favor of the other side when most reporters still working in their profession remain silent.”

Stephen Hess, a presidential and journalism scholar at the Brookings Institution, said reporters can be “conflicted” when they trade places. “On the other hand,” he added, “reporters going back to journalism after a stint in government are always better reporters in that they now understand how government really works.”

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/record-19-reporters-media-execs-join-team-obama/380971